The tech world reveals no signal of slowing down as we head quickly in direction of the tip of 2023. This week noticed the arrival of our favourite foldable cellphone up to now, an intriguing new Apple Pencil and a recent face on the planet of bone conduction headphones.
It hasn’t all been excellent news, sadly, as Netflix introduced one other subscription value rise within the US, UK and France. Should you’re signed as much as Netflix’s Premium or Fundamental plans, look out for some unwelcome hikes to your payments – different streaming providers are additionally certainly taking notice.
However that is sufficient about more and more painful tech subscriptions. This week was, in the primary, fairly enjoyable, as we found throughout our time testing the brand new Ray Ban Meta Good Glasses – learn on for our verdict on these, plus the newest Netflix trailer that is serving to us overlook about these pesky value hikes…
7. Netflix’s Our bodies grew to become our subsequent sci-fi must-watch
On the lookout for a brand new sci-fi sequence that additionally has a beneficiant serving to of dystopian detective drama? Then you definately’ll doubtless wish to add Netflix’s Our bodies to your watch listing – its first trailer landed this week, and you’ll already stream the whole thing.
Primarily based on the graphic novel by Si Spencer, Our bodies mixes varied genres – from homicide thriller to interval drama – with a wonderful solid that features Amaka Okafor, Emmy nominee Shira Haas, Olivier Award winner Kyle Soller and SAG Award winner Stephen Graham.
It is simply the factor we have to overlook about Netflix’s new value rises (extra on these later)…
6. Suunto flew into bone-conduction headphones with Wings
Garmin rival Suunto ventured into hitherto uncharted territory this week with the launch of its Wing bone conduction headphones. For the uninitiated, bone conduction headphones bypass the ear fully by sending vibrations by way of your cranium by way of a transducer, quite than soundwaves from a speaker. The tip end result leaves your ear free to pay attention out for site visitors, cyclists, pedestrians and warning alerts.
A trio of bodily buttons guarantee they are often operated utilizing gloves, important for cold-weather coaching, whereas the headset additionally performs properly with Suunto’s smartwatches, notably Race, permitting the wearer to obtain vocal coaching ideas and exercise updates immediately from the watch. They’re pricier than market leaders Shokz’ greatest efforts, however they’re additionally robust – in a position to face up to excessive temperatures and boasting a greater water resistance than the Shokz OpenRun Professional.
5. Fitbit placated followers with an apologetic app replace
The latest redesign of Fitbit’s smartphone app brought about a little bit of an uproar, as followers blasted the replace for being ugly, complicated and in some way much less practical than earlier than. Luckily, this week Fitbit prolonged an olive department to disgruntled customers by promising that it is engaged on a sequence of options that tackle (some) of the criticisms.
For a begin, it is reintroducing ‘Steps streaks’, a well-liked function that triggered what Fitbit referred to as “an outpour of affection” when it surprisingly disappeared within the app’s redesign. It’s going to return on iOS and in addition make its debut on Android.
With one other 4 app fixes additionally en route – plus the promise of a darkish mode – Fitbit has a minimum of stemmed a possible exodus of customers to the likes of Garmin and Apple. But it surely additionally wants its promising Fitbit Labs options, together with an AI chatbot that may analyze your exercises, to essentially hit the mark in 2024, too.
4. Apple gave us a less expensive, USB-C Pencil for iPads
Apple mainly ignored this week’s buzz a few potential new iPad (of any measurement) and as a substitute delivered a brand new Apple Pencil.
Okay, it is not essentially the most inspiring launch, however there are a few key variations between it and the Apple Pencil (2nd Technology). First is the hidden USB-C port. That’s proper, that is one other step in Apple’s efforts to wipe away all vestiges of the lightning plug. Should you recall, the very first Apple Pencil hid such a plug.
On this case, Apple neatly put the port and never the plug on the Pencil. Sadly, this Apple Pencil loses the wi-fi charging capabilities (and stress sensitivity), however a minimum of it’s considerably cheaper…so there’s that.
Ray-Ban sun shades that may shoot photographs and video for social media aren’t a brand new thought – the Ray-Ban Tales arrived again in 2021 with loads of promise, which they fell simply in need of delivering on. Properly, now they’re again with a brand new title, upgraded specs and a useful dose of AI (effectively, in case you stay within the US).
Throughout our time this week with the Ray-Ban Meta Good Glasses (catchy title) we discovered them to be a enjoyable, if area of interest, piece of face furnishings. The photographs and movies they shoot are actually much-improved because of the brand new 12MP digicam, whereas audio high quality is strong too (if not fairly as much as the extent of devoted air-conduction headphones).
On the down aspect, we could not check the promising conversational AI function totally, because it’s nonetheless in beta and solely accessible within the US for now. However in case you like trendy, wearable tech, it is effectively price studying our full Ray-Ban Meta Good Glasses overview.
2. Netflix examined our endurance with one other value hike
The Netflix password sharing crackdown has carried out fairly effectively for the streaming large, however that does not imply it is not carried out with value hikes – this week, Netflix once more raised the subscription costs for its Premium and Fundamental plans within the US, UK and France.
Within the US, for instance, Premium has risen from $19.99 to $22.99, whereas within the UK the Fundamental plan has risen by £1 per thirty days to £7.99. You possibly can learn the complete breakdown of value rises in our roundup beneath – or you’ll be able to simply stick with it in blissful ignorance by skipping it and studying about OnePlus’ glorious new foldable as a substitute.
1. The OnePlus Open grew to become our favourite foldable
It is already been a busy yr for foldable telephones, particularly with the arrival of the Google Pixel Fold. However this week OnePlus entered the fray with its first foldable: meet the OnePlus Open.
With a trim design, the highly effective Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, the OnePlus Open has an enviable specs listing. Its cameras are additionally the very best on any foldable cellphone we’ve examined.
Add in some glorious software program and options like super-fast charging and vivid shows, and the OnePlus Open has mainly develop into our favourite foldable cellphone to this point. The Open is a shot throughout Samsung’s bow to start out innovating quite than iterating on its foldable telephones, which may make 2024 quite attention-grabbing for foldables.
